Sadly, heat pumps often don't work as well as expected.

My mother is obsessed with getting one, but she lives in New England. I keep trying to explain they're not rated for New England level winter heating...

Home heating, you mean?

Yeah, still a major problem, don't know why the morons are downvoting you.

We'll probably have to subsidize electric home-heating from renewable sources: kinda like how we already provide Home Heating Assistance for the elderly...

>so I'm not quite sure how this is true.

We're using more and more energy every year.

Fossil fuel usage in the developed world has stopped scaling up, but it isn't decrasing. in fact, it's still increasing a bit: just not nearly as fast as total energy consumption.

At some point, we'll need to just ban fossil fuel extraction. Gotta hit it at the point of supply.

Here's the thing: so long as fossil fuel extraction is still profitable the global economy will just find other uses for fossil fuels.

Like, for instance, plastic production: which is projected to triple in the next 20 years, I think it was in timeframe.

Even as a greater and greater share of energy comes from renewables, actual fossil fuel use might continue at near-peak levels. So long as it's profitable, Capitalism will do it.

The only solution is to just ban fossil fuel extraction at some point, or to place such heavy fines on fossil fuel companies that extraction is not profitable anymore.

I know it's drastic, but otherwise none of this will matter. We can end up getting an ever-larger share of energy from renewables and it still won't stop fossil fuels destroying the Biosphere.

>Sure, in the same way that the so called Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a democratic entity.

Not at all.

There was nothing Totalitarian about Allende's government. Free, multi-party elections continued. The Constitution remained in force (in fact, it was ardent Constitutionalists in the government who fouled the first CIA Coup attempt).

Stop spreading file hatred and right-wing propaganda just because you are unable to face facts.

This has gone on too long. You are clearly a troll, likely a PAID troll. Nothing will stop you from repeating the same nonsense over and over, completely unsupported by facts and heedless of counterarguments.

You are being blocked. Good riddance.

>The deposition of Allende was a legitimate act to counter the USSR. Communism is a totalitarian ideology and totalitarian ideologies require extraordinary methods to be combated.

Allende was a Democratic Socialist not a "Communist" (by which you mean Authoritarian Socialist, in the style of the USSR) you troll.

His ideology was in no way Totalitarian, and he actively worked to maintain the institutions of Democracy.

Whereas PINOCHET the far-right "Capitalist" dixtator installed by the CIA was absolutely 100% a Totalitarian. He built Concentration Camps.

So by your own words, Pinochet should have been opposed by "extraordinary methods", not been actively supported and installed in the first place by the CIA.

Funny how you right-wing trolls twist morality in on itself so it becomes somehow right to depose a leftist Democracy to replace it with right-wing Totalitarianism.

I agree.

Bush and some of the Reagan admin holdover (particularly in the CIA) only saw an opportunity to collapse a rival, whereas Gorbachev was attempting the extremely difficult task of reforming the Soviet Union into a group of Democratic Socialist republics with actual multi-party elections...

I'm pretty sure that version of Russia, had it come to be, would be a much better version than the current Dictatorial Kleptocracy run by Putin.

Of course, even with US help the whole thing likely would have still fallen apart. It just would have been much more of a "soft landing" (gentle/bloodless dissolution) rather than wars (Chechnya), uprisings (Baltic states), and a massive portion of the Russian population falling into poverty and alcoholism/drugs/organized crime.

You're just trolling and not even reading what I wrote.

I compared how the US would have responded if Kazakhstan had been invaded instead of Ukraine, I didn't say it had been invaded.

The Kurds are one of the very few groups of brown-skinned people that have, on the balance, largely benefitted from US Imperialism. Until the US abandoned Kurdistan almost entirely to its own fate at the end of the Second Gulf War instead of backing their dream of an independent state, directly leading to ISIS murdering enormous numbers of Kurdistan soon thereafter, of course..

Your experience is largely unique- and would not have occurred if you were a brown person from nearly any other part of the world.

At the same time the US was investing in Kurdish farmers like your grandfather and sending your parents to college, it was doing things like backing a literal genocidal regime in Indonesia, behaving in an initially friendly manner to Apartheid South Africa (until public pressure caused the US to finally start enforcing sanctions), and overthrowing the legitimately-elected Democratic Socialist government of Chile and replacing it with the murderous Pinochet far-right dictatorship that set up concentration camps across the country...

Just because a few lucky family like yours benefitted does NOT mean US influence was a net positive for most people.

> were given massive aid,

No they were not.

The historical facts simply don't back your bogus assertions.

Several high-ranking members of the US intelligence community and several senators/Congressmen even went on record that it was a mistake NOT to provide the kind of massive aid you described. It should have happened, but it never did.

>If Putin had waited maybe a decade longer (I know he might not have that long) the alliance might have crumbled. Now it's as strong as it has ever been

And spent the whole time trying to smear Ukraine's reputation and disrupt the alliance in subtle ways, maybe.

Putin is impatient, though. He's called the collapse of the Soviet Union one of the greatest tragedies of human history (he's not entirely wrong, but he's right for the wrong reasons entirely... The US utterly failed to help most of the successor states and millions of people went through untold levels of suffering and, hundreds of thousands contracted diseases like HIV and Liver Cancer due to excessive drinking and IV drug use as a result... Capitalist NeoConservative greed for the win...) and is determined to make a strong start on rebuilding the Russian empire within in his lifetime, no matter the human cost...

>think it was because they thought they could steam roll Ukraine with half the troops they had and by just YOLO running to Kyiv like they did with the Crimea but Ukraine was ready this time and it ended up being a disaster.

It has more to do with the fact that both the US and European NATO countries have spent a significant portion of the last 8 years arming Ukraine to the teeth in preparation for further Russian attacks.

Also, the only real difference between Ukraine and Kazakhstan here that matters is Ukrainians are white. The US does more than enough naked Imperialism in brown countries that there's no way a similar level of support could have been mustered for Kazakhstan, due to racism...

>You've never been to Maine, I take it.

I have.

Maine lacks a strong jobs market for it to make much of an impact on nation housing markets. And zoning laws DO exist there...

> don't think you'll be able to turn north America into Amsterdam. (And trying to will get you lots of ideological pushback)

This is absolutely what needs to happen.

Massive problems require massive changes.

That's.... problematic.

Clearly we need to fix those tax laws so millionaires with 5 investment properties can't avoid taxes forever

If there's a difference in prices, due to moving to a cheaper area?

>the rapid rise in home prices can benefit existing owners when they sell and leave the area.

Again, once.

In the long run, even existing owners (who are younger, and still looking to upsize rather than downsize) get screwed, as well as everyone who doesn't currently own a home and rents.

Not coincidentally this latter group is disproportionately poor, brown, and young. All groups conservatives love to screw over.

>Exactly my point.

Wasn't clear, I guess?

I thought you were shrugging off the clear and evident need for higher density zoning to deal with the housing crisis with the "ughhh, just pave over more green space" (which I find particularly grating, as besides being concerned about the housing crisis, I am also a hiker and an Environmentalist) argument.

Higher density also helps save the planet from Climate Change (in addition to sprawl directly adding CO2 to the atmosphere through soil mineralization and loss of trees), because while it's impossible to service endless R-1 sprawl with a Mass Transit system good enough people will actually use it over driving, without insanely-large subsidies, it's perfectly doable in denser development.

Particularly when combined with Mixed Use Zoning, this can help move things towards where more people are willing to forego owning a car altogether, in favor of Mass Transit (which right now is rare, and exposes you to immense cultural discrimination...)

>Near where I live many retirees from middle class jobs in NYC move here and live like kings off pensions and the value their apartments sold for.

Boomers who already helped to pull up the ladder to prosperity behind them (supporting conservative politicians who slashed state support to state universities in the late 70's and early 80's, leading to a nationwide explosion in tuition prices, for instance...)

Do they really need more money?

Or perhaps, we should tax those sales more (Capital Gains taxes apply to home sales, I believe? Hard to recall rn, tired and have Post-Covid Syndrome brain fog) and use the money to incentive local communities to relax their zoning laws instead?

(Was part of Elizabeth Warren's housing plan for if she had been elected, actually: offer grants to communities they can receive for relaxing zoning laws, targeted to the areas with the strongest jobs markets and highest housing prices, as the high prices are a market indicator of a local housing shortage... Funny how I can remember some random things, but not others...)

>Near where I live many retirees from middle class jobs in NYC move here and live like kings off pensions and the value their apartments sold for.

Boomers who already helped to pull up the ladder to prosperity behind them (supporting conservative politicians who slashed state support to state universities in the late 70's and early 80's, leading to a nationwide explosion in tuition prices, for instance...)

Do they really need more money?

Or perhaps, we should tax those sales more (Capital Gains taxes apply to home sales, I believe? Hard to recall rn, tired and have Post-Covid Syndrome brain fog) and use the money to incentive local communities to relax their zoning laws instead?

(Was part of Elizabeth Warren's housing plan for if she had been elected, actually: offer grants to communities they can receive for relaxing zoning laws, targeted to the areas with the strongest jobs markets and highest housing prices, as the high prices are a market indicator of a local housing shortage...)

>Existing home owners can win as well

Only once, when the construction costs drop.

Eventually the new, higher housing prices (because the drop in construction costs actually leads to an INCREASE in housing prices dur to artificial scarcity. Counterintuitive, I know...) phase into the housing market through homeowners making upgrades to larger homes and first-time buyers.

So, everyone loses in the end except the banks, all due to zoning laws.

>Half an acre is a modest exaggeration, but in some wealthy suburbs it is standard.

It's actually more than that in most of my town. Literally houses on a full acre of land.

>Especially in North America there is more than enough land.

Not where the jobs are.

Not within a reasonable commute of it, anyways, since the same zoning commissions that that put R1 everywhere also don't zone nearly enough land for business purposes in the suburbs- so there are no jobs there and people have to commute two hours into the city center from the outermost ring of development in some areas already...

Everything sells sooner of later, if it's in a region with a decent jobs market (makn driver of Denand), since there's an enormous national housing shortage in areas with jobs.

This last caveat is important, since there's PLENTY of rundown, decrepit housing in the Rust Belt that will never sell since half the manufacturing jobs there moved overseas, the rest were automated, and they're never coming back.

Exactly.

If there weren't artificial scarcity of housing due to NIMBY Zoning Laws against denser development (which can mean just duplexes and single units built closer together: it doesn't even mean apartments most of the time, although that's often where density SHOULD be) then higher profits would lead to more companies entering the construction business, and more business for existing firms... More housing would be built, and the shortage would wane.

But because of the artificial scarcity of land created by zoning laws, lower construction costs just equate to TEMPORARY profit increases for builders, and no actual increase in construction (because there's nowhere to actually build more homes much of the time, they wait for the rare upcoming or release of undeveloped land...)

Temporary, because eventually the higher profits just lead to land prices going up, once landowners realize they can now sell land (or rather, old houses to be torn down and replaced with newer ones, in many cases) for more money and the builders can now afford it.

Since every homeowner had to buy the home at some point, homeowners don't really profit either, after a small group selling at the right time profits off the small spike in land costs due to cheaper construction, as they're eventually saddled with even more enormous mortgages...

The only group that profits off this in the really long run, are the banks that give out mortgages for ever more expensive homes...